Things We’ve Learned & Wished That We Knew Sooner

As you may or may not know in 2010 was when we began our training to run our first half-marathon. Both of us had run in high school and/or college, but never to the distance we would hit in our half marathon training. The two of us and probably like a lot of people who train for their first half marathon followed Hal Higdon‘s guide.

Hal Higdon’s guides are great and perhaps there are some people out there who work their way through a number of his different plans. We, however, did not and kind of decided to start looking through different plans (one of which was definitely Hal Hidgon’s) and piecing them together. After all what works for one person might not work for another and it never hurts to try something to see if it works for you!

Throughout the not quite two years of us running together we’ve learned to appreciate aspects of our training, realized some things that needed to be added and why, so we shall share with you!

Weight Training

Both of us got personal trainers at a point where we each wanted to lose weight (You can read about Beth’s story here and Teal’s story here). Boy are we thankful to Will & Johnny for helping us to get into shape, get healthy and teaching us a lot! Weight training is very important as you need to build a base for yourself. If you only rely on running to build your muscles then you are missing out! Not every single race you might run will you actually feel yourself digging deep and using that core strength or pumping those arms hard to get to that finish line, but those are important parts of your body to work on strength so you have it when you need it. With that said it’s important to find a balance with your weight training and make sure you are working every part of your body. Build that strong foundation so you can be a stronger runner! It was well into us running together that we realized we were at an advantage by already having trainers and having those weekly weights session. We didn’t know where we would be in our running if we didn’t have them!

While yes, a trainer makes it so much easier to get your weights session in you don’t neeed to have one! Grab a friend that’s knowledgeable about weights and ask them to show you the ropes a few times or look into one of the many apps that’s how there and available to guide you through a workout!

We just recently started to incorporate these into our workouts. What were we waiting for with these??

What? There is lots to read out there about tempo runs and sometimes it doesn’t seem to be written in layman’s terms, or is that just us? Part of why we probably did NOT do tempo runs for awhile was because we did not truly understand them. A tempo run normally consists of running at an easy pace to start, let’s say we are doing a 4 mile tempo run, so you may run your first mile at an easy pace then for miles 2 and 3 you kick it into a higher gear. This higher gear is a hard pace yet if you were rate levels of hard you might have comfortably hard, hard, and extremely hard. You want this higher gear to be at a comfortably hard pace so that you can sustain this level of intensity for the entirety of your two miles. Once you hit mile 4 take your speed back down to where you were in mile 1 for a nice recovery mile.

Importance. The idea behind a tempo run is to raise your lactate threshold. If you are at a point in your running where you are able to run the mileage you want in a long run but are ready to work on speed this is a workout you’ll want to add into your training schedule once a week to build speed and strength. The one thing that really helped us in determining how to do a tempo run was by using the McMillan Running Calculatornot only did it help with tempo runs but also discovering what type of speed we needed for all sorts of runs.

Hill Workouts

What?While yes there are races out there that you might register that are flat, flat, flat! But that is simply not going to be the case for each and every race that you will ever run. Those hills in your runs/races continue to help challenge us as runners. The best workout we have found to make sure a hill does not defeat us in a race are hill repeats. We’ll be honest they aren’t the most fun type of workout, but believe us when you finish a race with hills you’ll be thankful for the time you spent on hill repeats. For us a hill repeat workout consists of:

1. Doing your homework and find a hill that will work. You might want a hill that is somewhere between .1 – .2 of a mile.

2. Get a little bit of mileage in before your hill repeats, i.e. run from your house out to the hill

3. When you reach your hill if it’s your first time maybe try 4 or 5 runs up the hill and back down (but have a goal of working up to 10 hill repeats)

4. Get in that last bit of mileage back to your house

Importance. We’ve recently heard a couple people say this and it is the absolute truth, “the difference between me continuing to run and the people walking up the hill in that race are these workouts.” Even if you are not specifically training for a race that has hills in them, this workout is beneficial! It’ll build muscle that running on a flat path does not, help with your endurance and help you to get faster! Throw this type of running workout into your weekly mix as well and you’ll feel a difference at your next race!

Tangents
Just for good measure we are throwing this one in this post. And no we aren’t taking you back to geometry class either! 🙂 Or is it basic algebra?? Ha, math is hard, y’all! 🙂 There were plenty of times that we can remember one of us saying “ugh! My Runkeeper says I ran 6.43 in that 10k race!” and there were times when we’d finish our long runs together that we were asked “why did Teal run a further distance than you Beth?” TANGENTS! It’s about tangents! We can honestly say we were taught this very valuable piece of information from reading katieRUNSthis’ blog!

The majority of races we have run together have a certified course so it has been measured and is exactly the distance the course claims it to be. When a course is measured it is done so on tangents, so when there is a curved portion of your course the person who measured it did so on the tangents. This is also why for instance when we go run our long runs or even if we run side by side during a race our mileage for that long run or race could be different because neither one of us is running the curves the exact same. For the visual people out there, let us show you the tangents in visual form.

While you might have learned about tangents today know that at your next race you might do your best to run the tangents but still find that you have some extra mileage at the end, well, it’s hard to run the tangents EXACTLY. As you have to be looking ahead and plotting out exactly how to run the next curve not to mention that there are other runners out there with you on the course that might keep you from running that straight line exactly. All we can do is do our best!

We are no experts by any means! We read articles, blogs, etc. online in an effort to try and learn how we can improve our running. We wanted to share some information that opened up our eyes, helped us to understand running more and that we think everyone should have the benefit of knowing!

If you already knew all of this, well, thanks for bearing with us today! If you didn’t know all of this – are you going to be making some changes now to your weekly running? Glad to know why there is extra mileage on those races you’ve run before?

13 Responses

Great job explaining each lesson and the great illustrations! Remember on the GPS also that your GPS only grabs points every once in a while (although they are often) throughout a course, and can be up to 30 feet off on any one data location grab. So if you could run on a treadmill outside, you would see this 30 foot radius starburst around you on the GPS chart afterward. Multiply that by a lot of miles and you can still be several tenths of a mile off even if you run tangents. As a race director, I love anyone who can help keep explaining to people, “No, your Garmin will never match the exact length I said this course was. And no, the course isn’t measured or marked wrong.” 🙂

Oh gosh! My brain hurts..30 foot radius – whaa?? 😉 Haha! But that is a very good point too that we left off! There’s just no way your GPS is going to give you the EXACT mileage. Even on top of that if it’s crummy weather, you’re running through a tunnel, etc. lots areas for it to get off! Beth’s GPS at White Rock Mary had her IN White Rock Lake at one point! HA

I always try to run the tangent at races and some people look at me like I’m crazy and all I can think of is the extra distance they are running that they don’t have to. Great pointers in this post! Thanks you guys!

I’ve been following your blog for a while and must say that this is my favorite blog post! Thanks for all the great info! I’m currently training for my first half and am using Hal’s program so it was great to get a breakdown on the other vocab words found in other plans.

Well, thanks for following, Katie!! Glad you were able to take something from this post! Definitely a lot of words that get thrown around in the running community that need a simple breakdown and explanation! Which race are you doing for your first half?

I love this post! I definitely agree with you on hill training – it’s so valuable! I used to hate running hills, so I’d do whatever I could to avoid them. Then I ran Austin. Woo-ee! Talk about hills! That race was hard, but knowing that I tackled those crazy hills has given me a lot of confidence in other races, hilly or not.

I would add that I wish I knew sooner the value of taking your long runs slowly. I always knew that I was supposed to do that, but it’s counterintuitive and I just brushed it off. Since I’ve started really running my long runs slowly, I’ve increased my speed. I PR-ed in the 10k, half, and full distances without doing speedwork. Slow long runs work.*

Could you imagine what our running would be like if we all lived in Austin and constantly had hills in our runs?? Yes! That is so true and something we didn’t know either until after – long runs are in fact meant to be run at a slower pace! That’s also where the McMillan Calculator really came into play for us!

Like your post a lot! Brings back memories of those younger days when I was really serious about clocking up mileages progressively in training for half- / full marathons. Wasn’t aware of the tangent concept though I always endeavour to run the shortest distance when navigating turns and bends in run routes – thanks for informing! Besides weights, I personally recommend cross-training that incorporates high-intensity workouts (I do kickboxing and aerobics) as a training strategy to maintaining or improving stamina and strength while easing some stress off those running legs. Since a leg injury some years ago, I have made conscious efforts to prevent overstraining my legs by sticking to a regime of running and cross-training split half-half in the week. Discovered that I am able to sustain a good pace for longer distances and in the past year I have managed to shave 20 minutes off my half-marathon timing:)